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The free version is pretty good on its own - the PLUS version adds access to an online knowlegebase and some real-time detection of file system and registry changes. But mainly it helps support ongoing development of the program.

The discount ends at midnight EST today (25 Jan 2009) - so there's about 8 more hours as I write this...

I no longer trust anyone who claims to offer a lifetime license. Who's lifetime? Mine? Theirs? Until they realize they need more regular income? Until their mood changes?

This reminds me of an SMC router I had several years back - it had a lifetime warranty, and when it failed one day and I tried to get warranty service I found out that the 'lifetime' of the warranty was the the marketing lifetime of the product. Ie., since they didn't sell that model anymore, the warranty had expired.

I was actually more amused than angry at the use of the fine print - even though it was totally deceptive, I had to give them props for a clever deception.

only the annual subscription will make sense to me. And twenty dollar PER YEAR sounds very expensive

Once again, the wording of this type of annual license is a bit unclear - when I read it, it sounded like you get a license to use EULAlyzer Pro (the main advantage of which is the EULA-Watch feature) - and that you also get any upgrades that occur in the one year period.

I would have interpreted/guessed that the right to use EULAlyzer Pro/EULA-Watch does not end with your annual fee - just the right to upgrades/updates.

Or is this really the type of license/software that becomes useless without the annual updates/upgrades? I do wish vendors would try to make that more clear more often.

My understanding for xplorer2 is that you get updates for 1 year after purchase (I'm not sure if this applies to only major upgrades or all), but that this policy has not been enforced yet. He's mentioned in the forum that he plans to start enforcing in the near future, but you can buy (I think for about $20) 'Upgrade Assurance' which gets you lifetime upgrades.

SlySoft also have a good marketting ploy here - tell all your friends, post around the web .... quick buy your stuff now with lifetime updates --- while you can!

As far as whether this is a marketing ploy to gain sales this month, that may be, but I see nothing wrong with informing people of the pending change so someone considering a purchase can make their own choice of whether they want to purchase earlier than they might otherwise in order to get lifetime updates. I suspect if they made no announcement until the policy actually changed, there would be many more people complaining that they would have bought sooner if only they had known...

Then I'm confused about what you're paying extra for if you buy a "lifetime" license. To me, everyone should be entitled to bug fixes -- those are places where you're currently being denied the functionality that you thought were paying for in the beginning. That should be free, included in the base price.

One thing that I think is a little different with a product like AnyDVD is that they need to update/fix problems not only due to bugs, but because of intentional activities of DVD manufacturers to make DVDs uncopyable. Probably most of what goes into AnyDVD updates are changes to make the program deal with new protection techniques for new movie releases, so there is a continual R&D cost.

To my mind, I was surprised how long they kept on the Lifetime Updates policy (a main competitor of theirs, DVDFab, moved away from that policy several months ago).

Are there really programs out there that quit working after the license period has expired?

Yes, there is software with that type of licensing. I think it is somewhat common in the 'enterprise' or server software marketplace, but it is quite rare in the consumer/individual software market. One bit of software that has this type of license is SlickEdit's "SlickEdit Core for Eclipse" (http://www.slickedit.com/...&id=162&Itemid=57). I'm a fan of SlickEdit's main editor product (which does not have this type of expiring license), but I could not bring myself to buy into the type of license they have on the Eclipse plug-in.

One thing that people should look into is that ISPs often provide an anti-virus package as part of the subscription/account (at least this seems to be common in the US).

For example, if you're on Comcast you can get McAfee Security Suite by going to http://security.comcast.net/. Note that you can get one installation for each email address on your account, and I think you can have up to 7 email addresses on an account (at least that's the case for my account).

Of course, whether McAfee (or whatever your ISP might offer) is the package you want is another story, but I imagine that given that you've already paid for it (in a sense), it's worth at least considering.

Dunno, but the sales brochure says, "pedestal, with desk-height controls, writing table, convenience, and futuristic styling" so it seems like they might have been looking to give it a "2001: A Space Odyssey" look.

Quite funny - but I think it's a bit unfair to tar Honeywell as trying to pull off this goofy stunt - the computer was a legit Honeywell computer (that I imagine sold quite a few more than 0 units).

It was Neiman Marcus that tried to sell it as a "Kitchen Computer". But then again, they're well known for selling a thing or two for an embarrassingly high price tag that no one in their right mind would consider buying; it's kind a of a trademark of theirs.

The thing you have to be careful of when buying software on the 'gray market' (this could be eBay or software discounters that sell old versions or OEM versions) is that if the license is invalid (or sold too many times) the manufacturer will often blacklist the code. That means that updates to the software will cause it to stop working, or if the software requires online activation it may stop working even without updates.

I used to use JetStart a while back, but stopped because it crashed a bit too often; except for that, I liked it pretty well. That was a while ago, so those problems might be resolved by now. I don't recall having any problem uninstalling it.

These policy changes are unfortunate. I wasn't too interested in paying for an upgrade to 2.0 to start with, but with the more restrictive licensing, I doubt even some sort of stupid impulse will get me to buy (stupid impulses probably drive most of my software purchases).

One year and done. No option to continue using the current version - I asked and that apparently will not be allowed.

Are you sure about that one? I got an email about the impending release of Direct Access 2.0, and the way I read it, the annual subscription is for support, updates and upgrades - pretty much standard stuff for an annual subscription fee. It doesn't say anything about the license for what ever you have at the time running out:

Quote from: nagarsoft.com

To get Direct Access 2.0, you need to have an active upgrade subscription. You can buy the upgrade protection now for only 24.95$/year and get priority support and free updates and upgrades for 1 year.